D&D: The eSports Conniption

D&D social media pooped its pants the other day when the Hasbro CEO referred to “eSports” in a conversation about Magic, D&D, and their respective profitability.

So, first thing’s first. Unknot your panties and clean out your shorts.

First of all, if you actually watch the entire interview and look at context (I know, I know, it’s so much more fun to get mad about out-of-context quotes…), the Hasbro CEO was discussing the digital brands of Magic the Gathering and D&D… In other words, video games and such… not tabletop. He also specifically mentioned viewers watching competitive Magic the Gathering.

It’s not unimaginable that we might see PvP-style multiplayer video games with either Magic or D&D branding. Recall that the WotC President, Chris Cocks, comes from a video gaming background. Video games are high on his list of priorities. But hopefully something a bit more exciting than last year's Dungeon Chess (unfortunately, not kidding here).

Second, let’s pretend for a moment that he was talking about tabletop D&D -- to be clear, he wasn’t. Dungeons & Dragons has a long, long history of tournament adventures created for conventions.

To the Aid of Falx
The Egg of the Phoenix
The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan
The Ghost Tower of Inverness
White Plume Mountain

The list goes on and on. Given the popularity of D&D streams, it’s not out of realm of possibility that adventures like these could be run as one-shot tournament streams for viewers, alongside longer campaigns like Critical Role.

So, take a pill and relax. You are literally already watching D&D on YouTube and Twitch. Tournament style D&D is just kickin’ it old school.

D&D: Who is Ravnica for?

Possibly useful for an urban homebrew campaign?

Yesterday’s announcement of a new hardback for a Ravnica D&D campaign setting has a lot of fans scratching their heads.

Eberron fans only got a PDF update with some fleshed out UA content that has gotten a bit of a “meh” reaction. Forgotten Realms fans are griping, “Where is our full campaign sourcebook?” (Given the release of SCAG and other edition resources from the DM’s Guild, a campaign guide is not likely to happen any time soon). Greyhawk fans are pissed that 2nd Edition was really the last time the setting saw any love what-so-ever… And there’s Dragonlance, Dark Sun, Planescape, and others... One can only hope for a PDF update on DM’s Guild (which I discussed yesterday).

So Why Ravnica?

It’s actually not too hard to figure out… Money.  As in, Magic the Gathering brings in way more money than D&D ever has. On a 2016 earnings call, Hasbro management estimated that they have from 15 to 20 million active Magic players. That's a lot of potential consumers.

D&D as a brand is growing and Wizards/Hasbro wants to leverage that brand for their other consumers. Magic is an obvious low-barrier avenue to expand the player base. Even though it’s a Pokemon-esque card flopping game, it is fantasy-themed and has a deep lore associated with it. Wizards of the Coast already has their internal “lore bibles” for all the Magic releases, so why not leverage all that unseen content?

EDIT: To be clear, I am not against this decision. It is a smart and profitable move by Wizards to expand the D&D audience.

There is a certain synergy in bringing the brands together in a joint marketing push.

1. Magic players are already familiar with Wizards of the Coast, and even if they don’t play D&D, they are certainly aware of it. There is already some Wizards of the Coast brand loyalty that exists.

2. Retailers can display the new D&D book right alongside their Magic decks and booster. There is a perfect “Hey, have you heard they released a D&D campaign setting?” sales pitch built in.

3. Don’t discount the power of the parent’s wallet. Younger kids may be playing Magic, but the purchase power really comes from Mom & Dad. Many of the parents may have played D&D in their younger days. Many of them even play Magic with their kids today. It makes sense to court the parents as well as the kids.

But Will It Sell?

There is always financial risk in courting a different market from your core fan base. Magic has deep lore built into the game… But how many Magic players actually care about the flavor text on their cards? Are there fans of Magic who are deep into the fluff of the game? Will they actually care enough to spend the money?

Hmm... This could be a thing...

What we also don’t know is whether Ravnica will be a complete game with PC classes, game world, and monster stats all included, or if it will mostly be only a D&D campaign guide (the book cover and Planeshift PDFs seem to indicate the latter). We do know that D&D does not have a magic system that would support the “5 mana color” flavor of Magic spells. Will those lore fans be disappointed at a spell slot system that has none of the feel of Magic the Gathering?

Wizards likely has the market research that tells them this will at least be a moderate hit, and I’m sure they know exactly how many people have downloaded their D&D Planeshift PDFs… but downloading a free PDF is a far cry from purchasing a $50 hardback book.

However, if they are able to sell this book to one-tenth of 1% of their Magic fan base, that’s at least a half-million dollars in revenue. If they sell to half of 1% of their existing Magic players, that will likely be between $1.5 and $2 million in revenue for the D&D brand.

Final Thoughts

One thing I have noticed, is that the Plane Shift PDFs have come out in close proximity to similarly themed D&D adventures. Innistrad went with Curse of Strahd. Ixalan matches somewhat well with Tomb of Annihilation... and now Ravnica corresponds roughly with the release of a Waterdeep-based urban campaign.

For me personally, Ravnica holds little interest. Plane Shift: Ixalan feels like it could have been fleshed out even more into a full blown campaign setting. I’ll likely browse the Ravnica book when it hits retailers to see if there might be anything useful for a homebrew game, but I admit I am not the target market. The goal of Wizards is to turn at least a small percentage of their Magic players into D&D players.

And that would be a damn big payday for D&D... But it also risks of a big pile of unsold books. Let's hope for the former.

Owlbear's D&D Holiday Gift Guide

The holidays are here, so you might be wondering what to get your gaming friends (or, let’s be honest… probably a little gift for yourself). The great news is that there is a whole plethora of D&D-related gifts for a wide variety of diverse gaming interests. [Updated for 2018]

D&D RPG

The recent release schedule has had quite an array of books for the tabletop gamer. For players and Dungeon Masters alike, Xanathar’s Guide to Everything ($30) includes 32 new class paths and new spells for PCs, as well as offering an array of of advice for DM’s on encounter building, proficiencies, traps, and downtime activities. Volo’s Guide to Monsters ($34) gives DM’s new variants of classic, iconic monsters as well as includes other fantastic creatures that didn’t quite make it into the Monster Manual.

The most recent adventure offerings have included a variety of adventuring locales for gaming groups with a variety of play styles.

Storm King’s Thunder ($34) is sprawling Sword Coast campaign crossing the wilds of Faerun from Waterdeep to Anauroch and nearly all places in between. This sandbox-like adventure path has multitude of hooks and side quests all over its massive Sword Coast map.

Tales from the Yawning Portal ($34) brings back old-school dungeon crawls from prior editions, updating them for D&D 5th Edition. Classics include the Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan, the Sunless Citadel, White Plume Mountain, and the infamous Tomb of Horrors.

Tomb of Annihilation ($34) provides a Chultan hommage to the classic Isle of Dread and Tomb of Horrors adventures, updating the hex crawl style campaign for 5th Edition, as well as throwing in some old-school death.

Waterdeep and Undermountain reappear in 5th Edition with Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and Dungeon of the Mad Mage. Lead the chase for a vast treasure within the City of Splendors or delve the darkness beneath the Yawning Portal.

For fans of Critical Role, you can now play in Matthew Mercer’s world, the Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting (apostrophes included at no extra charge) for $26.

Or if Tolkien is more your thing, Cubicle 7 has converted its One Ring game to D&D 5th Edition rules with Adventures in Middle Earth. If you've wanted to play a low fantasy version of D&D, especially set in Tolkien's universe, this is probably right up your alley.

In the accessories category, there is the newly revised Dungeon Master's Screen Reincarnated ($10), the thick, folding cardboard D&D Adventure Grid (more than just a battle mat at $20) and the venerable, but still available D&D Dungeon Tiles: Wilderness Master Set ($18), soon to be reprinted along with the Dungeon and City master sets.

If you’re playing on the grid, you may want to pick up some D&D Icons of the Realms or Pathfinder Battles miniatures… and for the DM who has everything, there is the massively, huge Tiamat Ma’al Drakar miniature for about $100 from Reaper Miniatures. Can that thing even be called a “miniature”?

D&D Board Games

But it’s not all about D&D role-playing. Wizards of the Coast has expanded the brand into some really amazing board games.

Wrath of Ashardalon miniatures

For those who don’t have time for a regular rpg home game, or may be missing a Dungeon Master to run the group, Wizards of the Coast has a series of dungeon-crawl board games that might serve as a reasonable substitute. The most recent version is Tomb of Annihilation (not to be confused with the D&D adventure of the same name).

The Temple of Elemental Evil version introduced campaign play, which the prior versions lacked. However, Wrath of Ashardalon probably comes with the best variety of miniatures, including an amazing Huge Red Dragon. Not only are theses fun dungeon crawl board games, the miniatures themselves make these games a fantastic value if you also play D&D tabletop.

Assault of the Giants takes on the area-control board game with asymmetric play and features a beautiful Sword Coast game board and over a dozen giant miniatures. Even though the giant miniatures are not as large as the Icons of the Realms miniatures, they are still sizable enough for rpg play in a pinch. This also comes in a painted miniature premium version.

Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate reskins a D&D theme onto Betrayal at the House on the Hill. Fans of the original will almost certainly like this version (full review here).

Dragonfire brings Catalyst Games’ Crossfire deck-builder mechanics into the D&D world. This game not only offers cooperative deck building, you can also play campaign scenarios that allow your characters to progress similar to a legacy game. I will have to opportunity to play this title more extensively this weekend and I’m looking forward to seeing how it fares. Fans of the Shadowrun Crossfire game are bound love this D&D themed version.

Tyrants of the Underdark combines deck building with area control in an Underdark themed game board (my initial review here). Like other deck builders, you mix and match cards from different factions to give the game a huge replayability factor.

There are multiple paths to victory and the lead can swing wildly from player to player across turns. Victory points at the end are almost always very close, making the game play exciting to the very last turn. This is one of the top board games in my collection, and probably ranks just behind Roll for the Galaxy as my favorite.

Lords of Waterdeep along with its expansion Scoundrels of Skullport provide a solid worker-placement board game. Though it is now several years old, it is still in print and is well regarded even among the most jaded board gamers. This is also a great “gateway” board game for D&D groups that may not be as into the board game scene.

D&D Adjacent Games

Though not strictly D&D themed, there are several fantasy games that give a similar flavor.

If you are lucky enough to live near a 5 Below thrift store, keep an eye out for Magic the Gathering: Arena of the Planeswalkers for only $5 ($10 - $12 on Amazon)! This Heroscape-based game uses characters and creatures from the Magic the Gathering universe in an entertaining, squad-based miniatures skirmish game. But the best part is that it come with 35 miniatures. That’s a fantastic value at $5 or even $10.

It’s $5 expansion, Battle for Zendikar come with another 16 miniatures. That over 50 miniatures for between $12 to $18!!!  If you are really lucky, you can also find Shadows over Innistrad for less than $10 and add another 25 figures to that total! Hell, even if you hate skirmish board games, you can pick up 75 miniatures for under $30… and the game is pretty fun, too!

While not quite the stunning Planeswalker deal, Zombicide: Black Plague offers a zombie apocalypse with fantasy flavor. Zombicide has been so popular that it has generated many expansions, but this stand-alone version is probably the best, especially if you like the fantasy theme.

Speaking of fantasy re-themes, Defenders of the Realm generates the race-against-the-clock excitement of games like Pandemic, but instead of fighting disease, you are fighting orcs and dragons!

And lastly, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention one of the old-timer dungeon crawlers, Descent: Journeys in the Dark and its many expansions. Descent now includes an app from Fantasy Flight that allows all the players to play cooperatively against the game without the Overlord player. (Imperial Assault offers a similar dungeon-crawl-slash-race-against-the-clock experience, but in the Star Wars universe).

Final Thoughts

We're definitely in a golden age of gaming. Between D&D and other fantasy rpgs and board games, there are dozens of ways to get your fantasy kicks this year.

Wizards Digital Game Studio Is Probably Not What You Think

So an announcement from Chris Cocks (Wizards of the Coast President) has created a fair amount of speculation about what's in store for digital D&D products in the future. Here's the quick summary of the press release.

Magic the Gathering Tactics

• Wizards of the Coast is forming a digital studio.
• The Magic Online team has been folded into this studio.
• Wizards has been farming talent from other game studios.
• They wish to "bring Magic and D&D to unexpected settings, genres, and platforms."

So what does this mean for D&D table top? Probably not much (if anything) and not for a long while despite what all the blogs are speculating online.